A Game And A Chat: FRACT OSC’s Richard Flanagan

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FRACT OSC is a musical passion project that’s been strumming light riffs on the backing track of RPS’ Official Exciteosourchestra for years. It’s a first-person explorer set in a pulsating dance floor paradise of smooth synths and devious puzzles. Our kind of thing? You don’t know the half of it. Alec, however, came away feeling slightly let down, so I invited creator Richard Flanagan to defend his design choices. We’ll discuss criticism of FRACT’s bold, beautiful world, music as an integral part of the design process, the personal nature of the game, Myst and other first-person puzzlers, and HEAVY METAL. We’re kicking off at 12 PM PT/8 PM RPS Time. Tune in below.

Update: We’re done! Tons of interesting discussion about puzzle design and musical toys and METAL. Watch it all below.

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I think NaissanceE mated with the inside of one of the Covenant ships from Halo, and then several months later this game arrived.

I love it. The puzzles aren't much like Myst at all, really (none of the ones I've come across so far was particularly cryptic), and they're all suitably music/rhythm based. The fact that sometimes the puzzle is already solved, and you have to break it and then remake it to progress, is very neat; and the musical stings it gives you when you solve something are incredibly satisfying.

The closest game I would compare it to is AntiChamber, for the environmental manipulation and unlockable navigation. Obviously love of music and knowledge of synthesizers was key, but it’d be interesting to hear if there were any particular games that inspired the game design and style.

I think NaissanceE mated with the inside of one of the Covenant ships from Halo, and then several months later this game arrived.

I love it. The puzzles aren’t much like Myst at all, really (none of the ones I’ve come across so far was particularly cryptic), and they’re all suitably music/rhythm based. The fact that sometimes the puzzle is already solved, and you have to break it and then remake it to progress, is very neat; and the musical stings it gives you when you solve something are incredibly satisfying.

Edit: Well that was great. It seems like since the earlier stuff there’s been a lot of expansion of the flexibility of the musical stuff you can produce, a lot of “do at least this to solve problems, but you can do a few different things within this”, and nice stuff about solving puzzles with different timings to produce different timings of the results.